Early life
Kaufman grew up in Manhattan in a Jewish household, where bread was a fixture of daily life through his grandmother's baking and visits to neighborhood Italian and Jewish bakeries with his mother.4 As a child he was diagnosed with celiac disease, which prevented him from eating bread; he reportedly grew out of the condition by age 16.4 He was drawn to performance from an early age but abandoned aspirations to act after developing a speech impediment.4 He went on to attend UCLA film school, where he built the craft he would apply across two decades of independent filmmaking.4
Before his first feature, Kaufman worked as a production assistant for comedian Bob Hope, writing jokes for the entertainer.4
Career
Film career (1977-1990)
Kaufman's first directorial credit was The Secret Dreams of Mona Q (1977), an adult comedy on which his brother Lloyd served as cinematographer.2 He followed that with work on Squeeze Play! (1979), a bawdy comedy co-developed with Lloyd, on which Charles served as writer, second unit director, boom operator, and actor.52
His most significant film came the following year. Mother's Day (1980), which Kaufman wrote (with Warren Leight), directed, and produced alongside Michael Herz, with Lloyd serving as associate producer, was made on a reported budget of approximately $115,000.1 The film, a violent horror-thriller following three women on a camping trip who fall victim to two murderous young men and their domineering mother, appeared on Variety's list of top-grossing independent films of 1980.4 It was banned in the United Kingdom upon release due to its depictions of violence and has since built a devoted cult following.1 Critics at the time noted that Kaufman showed "an obvious sense of the ridiculous," though opinions on how he applied that sensibility varied sharply.1
Kaufman continued making low-budget genre pictures through the mid-1980s. In 1985 he wrote and directed When Nature Calls, a spoof comedy featuring David Strathairn.6 He co-directed Jakarta (1988), an action thriller about a CIA agent haunted by events in Indonesia.2 By the end of the decade, the rise of major-studio dominance in genre distribution had effectively ended the market for independent filmmakers of Kaufman's type, and he stepped back from filmmaking around 1990.
Television writing (1986-1991)
As feature film opportunities narrowed, Kaufman shifted to animation writing. He became a prolific contributor to the 1986 animated series Dennis the Menace, credited on approximately 65 episodes.2 He also wrote three episodes of Kissyfur (1986), NBC's animated series featuring a circus bear cub, and two episodes of Peter Pan and the Pirates (1990-1991), the Fox animated adaptation of J.M. Barrie's classic.2 It was during this phase of his television career that he wrote for the Ghostbusters animated universe.
Ghostbusters
The Real Ghostbusters (1989)
Kaufman wrote the The Real Ghostbusters episode "If I Were a Witch Man", which aired on ABC on September 30, 1989.7 The episode sends the Ghostbusters to a small New England village to confront an escaped ancient witch named Kestrel who is pursuing revenge against descendants of those who once imprisoned her, including the Spengler family. A central plot point involves Kestrel taking possession of Egon while he is working undercover at a local school.
Slimer! (1988-1989)
Kaufman contributed three episodes to Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters, the animated segments featuring Slimer that ran alongside the main series under the expanded ABC format:
Bread & Cie
Kaufman's path out of the entertainment industry ran through the south of France. Attending the Cannes Film Festival over multiple years, he learned artisan breadmaking from local bakers.1011 He consulted with celebrated Los Angeles baker Nancy Silverton4 before returning to his roots: two of his grandmother's original recipes, challah and multigrain bread, became anchor items on the menu.10
On December 16, 1994, Kaufman opened Bread & Cie in San Diego's Hillcrest neighborhood, the city's first dedicated artisan bakery specializing in hard-crust European-style loaves.12 Early customers resisted the unfamiliar style, requiring Kaufman to distribute free samples door-to-door to build an audience.4 He also solved a technical problem specific to San Diego: the city's filtered water lacked the mineral content needed for proper dough, so he hired someone to recreate New York water chemistry.4 The bakery grew into a regional wholesale operation supplying major grocery chains in Southern California and has remained a Hillcrest institution.3
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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"Mother's Day (1980 film)," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day_(1980_film).
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"Charles Kaufman," IMDb (nm0442104), accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0442104/.
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"History of Bread & Cie," Bread & Cie, accessed 2026-06-13, https://breadandcie.com/about-us/history-of-bread-and-cie/.
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"People of the Bread: Charles Kaufman of Bread & Cie," San Diego Magazine, accessed 2026-06-13, https://sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/people-of-the-bread-charles-kaufman-of-bread-cie/.
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"Squeeze Play!," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeeze_Play!.
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"When Nature Calls," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Nature_Calls.
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Spook Central, "The Real Ghostbusters: If I Were a Witch Man," accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.spookcentral.us/sclib/the-real-ghostbusters-if-i-were-a-witch-man.
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"Slimer! And the Real Ghostbusters: Room at the Top" (tt0929172), IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929172/.
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"Slimer! And the Real Ghostbusters: Sweet Revenge" (tt0929181), IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929181/.
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"An Interview with Our Founder," Bread & Cie, accessed 2026-06-13, https://breadandcie.com/about-us/an-interview-with-our-founder/.
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"How a Cult Horror Filmmaker Created SD's Most Beloved Bakery," San Diego Magazine, accessed 2026-06-13, https://sandiegomagazine.com/listen/happy-half-hour-podcast/bread-cie-bakery-charles-kaufman/.
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"Meet Charles Kaufman of Bread & Cie in Hillcrest," SDVoyager, accessed 2026-06-13, https://sdvoyager.com/interview/meet-charles-kaufman-bread-cie-bakerycafe-hillcrest/.
